


Honey, Gilt, and Light

by SadMageCentral



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Baby Animals, Cutesy, Disney References, Dorks in Love, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff, Self-Doubt, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 17:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18197306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadMageCentral/pseuds/SadMageCentral
Summary: A fluffy scene with Erandur and Lindis, a half-Nord, half-Altmer (non-Dragonborn) wandering bard and herbalist with a penchant for winning the trust of small fuzzy animals, Disney-princess-style.





	Honey, Gilt, and Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mutantenfisch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mutantenfisch/gifts).



Erandur lingers for a few more moments on the road, to make absolutely certain that there is nothing more he can do to ease the journey for the traveller they have just helped - a young Khajiit, whose anxiously twitching, bristle-tipped ears measure about twice the size of his head, on his way to catch up with his caravan. When, with yet another twitch of his ears, this fine feline fellow (not a very elegant description; a proper bard like Lindis would surely cringe) reassures Erandur that no, no, ‘this one is all set now, no need to fuss’, and bids his final farewell, the Dunmeri priest turns away from the worn cobblestones, which are lodged like mosaic pieces between little patches of dirt, and finds his companion seated under a birch tree, with the basket of the herbs she has gathered - as the actual purpose of their journey, before they were sidetracked by the lost Khajiit, was to collect alchemical ingredients for the mages at the College - resting beside her, framed by gently rumpled ferns.

The honeyed light that is streaming through the sighing canopy has outlined her thick, wavy mane of hair in blaring white, and dabbed paint-like strokes of gold over her cheekbones and chin.

Most of the wayfarers that cross paths with Lindis - your friendly neighbourhood herbalist and wandering bard extraordinaire! - take her to be a true daughter of Skyrim, as her fellow artists from Solitude would say, in an appropriately singsong voice… But to a keener eye, her features would appear rather too angular for a full-blooded Nord. And now, wreathed in the sun’s warm glow, her skin caressed by these touches of gold, she looks even more like her father. An Altmer who dared to love a Nord.

'My parents were ready to flee to the coldest reaches of Winterhold; to the very end of Nirn, if that meant they could be together,’ Lindis once told him, tilting her head thoughtfully as her eyes - with human-like whites, but shaded vividly like the richest amber - reflected the silky coils of the aurora. 'As a little girl, I would scarcely dare dream about finding a love like theirs. It just did not seem possible to me… But now I know it is’.

The memory makes Erandur’s heart jolt painfully - and he freezes on the side of the road, not daring approach Lindis, even as she turns, and looks straight at him, and nods her head expectantly, pulling out her trusty lute and strumming the strings.

As usual, the ripple of music - like a warble of a merry little creek - draws in all manner of tiny, fuzzy critters that have, apparently, been lurking in the undergrowth, pressing themselves against the ground and poking their fretfully twitching noses from under the velvety curtains garglands of step moss. Before Erandur knows it, an entire family of wild rabbits has emerged, showing him their sleek brown backs as they lift themselves off their hind paws, stretching instinctively towards the music, the sunlight turning their ears into pulsing pinkish sea conches. Then, what seems to be a headgehog rushes through the grass with a busy rustle, a with mushroom that it has pinned on its needles bobbing, boat-like, on the green waves. A flock of songbirds also descends - tiny fat balls of down and feathers - and chirps along to the tune, one even growing bold enough to roost on Lindis’ shoulder.

Erandur’s heart jolts again. A silent scream intrudes into his mind - a command to run, which he once obeyed so blindly, when the purple stream of the Miasma frothed behind him and his brothers and sisters in Vaermina’s shadow lay do on the cold stone floor, right beside the beast pelt-clad Orcish invaders, and let the enchanted sleep claim them. To run, run, run, and never come back.

Because, even after all this time; after all the adventures they have had together - it still does not feel quite right. Especially when he sees her like this, bathed in sunlight, mesmerizing even the most skittish of forest creatures, like a princess out of storybook. A perfect woman, dreaming of a perfect love. A love like her parents’. A love that she surely deserves. All gilt and honey and light.

He cannot give her that. He is not perfect. He is old and broken and marred by so much darkness that even a lifetime of prostrating himself before Lady Mara’s altar will not wash away the ash and blood caked into the crevices of his gnarly hands. She should not have chosen him, should not have believed in him - and if he runs, if he locks himself away amid the howling silence of the Nightcaller Temple like he once intended, with no company but the empty-eyed, accusing skulls that were once Veren and Thorek… She might yet forget all about him, and set out to look for someone that would be to her what her father was to her mother. Perfect.

But he - he does not run. He does not retreat back into the biting, icy jaws of his native Pale. The draw of the music, the warmth, the love radiating from the tall figure with a frizzy halo of blaring white along the contours of her hair, is far too strong to resist. Not for someone who has been alone most of his life, changing names and callings but never quite fitting in, rolling across the entire map of Tamriel like a tumbleweed, losing friends to war, to vampirism, to his own panicked urge to push everyone away… Until he looked into a pair of amber eyes, and felt the world float off somewhere into pink-tinted nothingness.

The ache in Erandur’s chest congeals, sweetens, acquires a heady tang. His lips twitching to mirror Lindis’ smile, he takes an uncertain step away from the road, then another, and another still. The rabbits and hedgehog bolt back into hiding; the birds zoom away; he and Lindis are left with the little clearing under the sheltering birch all to themselves.

She finishes her melody just as he approaches and, setting the lute gingerly against the sun-warmed white-and-greyish trunk, gets up, drawing herself to her full breathtaking height - mighty Nord meeting willowy Altmer… And then leans in to kiss the tiny, almost dizzy, flushed Dunmer, her fingers finding the strands of his long silver-specked hair and coiling them around her fingers.

The thrill of her mouth against his resounds through Erandur as if his chest, too, were a lute. He floats off, lightheaded, with this noiseless music, forgetting that he does not deserve it. Forgetting that he will never be as perfect as Lindis. Forgetting to hate himself.


End file.
